In churches across America, hell is being frozen out as clergy find themselves increasingly hesitant to sermonize on Christianity's outpost for lost souls.

The violence and torture that Dante described in the "Inferno" and that Hieronymus Bosch illustrated on canvas five centuries ago have become cultural fossils in most mainstream Christian denominations, a story line that no longer resonates with churchgoers.

"There has been a shift in religion from focusing on what happens in the next life to asking, 'What is the quality of this life we're leading now?' " said Harvey Cox Jr., an author, religious historian and professor at Harvard Divinity School. "You can go to a whole lot of churches week after week, and you'd be startled even to hear a mention of hell."

DAMNATION LOSES APPEAL

Hell's fall from fashion indicates how key portions of Christian theology have been influenced by a secular society that stresses individualism over authority and the human psyche over moral absolutes. The rise of psychology, the philosophy of existentialism and the consumer culture have all dumped buckets of water on hell.

The tendency to downplay damnation has grown in recent years as nondenominational ministries, with their focus on everyday issues such as child-rearing and career success, have proliferated and loyalty to churches has deteriorated.

"It's just too negative," said Bruce Shelley, a senior professor of church history at the Denver Theological Seminary. "Churches are under enormous pressure to be consumer-oriented. Churches today feel the need to be appealing rather than demanding."

A 1998 poll by Barna Research Group, a Ventura company that studies Christian trends nationwide, found that church shopping has become a way of life: 1 in 7 adults changes churches each year; 1 in 6 regularly rotates among congregations.

Fickleness has helped give rise to "mega-churches" -- evangelical congregations of more than 2,000 people that mix Scripture with social and recreational programs in a casual atmosphere.

Mega-churches routinely pay for market research on what will draw people and keep them coming back.

"Once pop evangelism went into market analysis, hell was just dropped," said Martin Marty, professor emeritus of religion and culture at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Hell is far from dead. A May 2001 Gallup Poll of adults nationwide found that 71 percent believe in hell.

They just don't want to hear about it.

Even among some "born-again" churches, hell is a rare topic of conversation.

Born-again Christians believe in hell, but they also believe their decision to embrace Christ has earned them a one-way ticket in the other direction.

Traditional denominations also have pushed hell to the margins. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s first catechism, drawn up a few years ago by a committee, mentions hell only once.

George Hunsinger, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the catechism's principal author, would have liked the document to address hell more directly and "talk about divine judgment in a responsible way." But the committee rejected the idea without much debate.

"It's a failure of nerve by churches that are not wanting to take on a nonpopular stance," Hunsinger said.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II made headlines by saying hell should be seen not as a fiery underworld but as "the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

As much as that seemed like a departure from church teachings, the pope's words were not all that new. In the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church had moved away from the view of hell as a gothic torture chamber as part of the Second Vatican Council's modernization of church teachings.

"When you take (hell) away as a threat, everything changes," said the University of Chicago's Marty. "Who goes to confession anymore? Time was, a (Catholic) church had 16 booths and people snaked around the block. Today, a church might have one left."

One measure of hell's continued decline can be found in the changed attitude of the Rev. Billy Graham, who came to prominence in the 1940s as a fire-and-brimstone Gospel preacher. His depiction of hell was unequivocal, an unpleasant address for unrepentant sinners.

Even Graham has reconsidered hell -- not whether it exists, but what it is.

"I believe that hell is essentially separation from God. That we are separated from God, so we can have hell in this life and hell in the life to come. . . ." Graham told an interviewer in 1991. "But to describe hell in vivid terms like I might have done 30 or 40 years ago, I'm not at liberty to do that, because whether there is actually fire in hell or not, I do not know."

HELLISH HISTORY

The origins of hell are tangled up in the Hades of Greek mythology and the ancient Hebrew concept of Shoel -- locales where the dead, both good and bad, resided.

Hell became more hellish when the early Christians infused it with a serious fear factor. Jesus is quoted in the Bible describing hell as the "outer darkness" consumed by an "everlasting fire." The Book of Revelation warned that sinners would be "thrown into the lake of fire."

During the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance, a lurid image of hell was firmly cemented in people's minds. Dante wrote that within the seventh circle of hell runs "the river of blood, within which boiling is/Whoe'er by violence doth injure others." Bosch depicted naked souls being devoured by a birdlike creature, pierced by spears and tormented by half-human demons.

In the centuries to come, scientific discoveries and the European Enlightenment would crack hell's veneer, undercutting all things supernatural and questioning whether a merciful God would be so cruel.